QFX bank imports all transactions and overwrites account

JH

18 May, 2018 01:28 PM

When I download and import a QFX file from my bank it imports ALL transactions, overwriting the entire account and, in the process, creating many uncleared transactions and a false balance. I would think that Moneydance would distinguish between cleared items and uncleared items. Is there a way to only import new, uncleared transactions?

I am running V2017.7.1 (1671). My bank is Boeing Employee’s Credit Union. I also note that QFX downloads from other sites (for credit cards, etc.) display the same type of behavior when imported.

I think it may have something to do with my setup from Quicken to MD.

I originally imported my accounts, etc. from Quicken 2017 Deluxe. I did some minor tweaking of transactions (found some $0.00 amounts) and accounts setup but many of the older transactions had a green dot attached (“cleared”?)

I don’t know if my reconciled transactions from Quicken, i.e. transactions that were downloaded and balanced against my statements in Quicken, are truly “cleared” (MD terms) in MD.

I have a little difficulty comparing the “cleared” (compared to bank transactions) and “reconciled” (transactions balanced against statements) from Quicken to the “reconciling” and “cleared” indicators in MD. I’ve read that MD uses the term “reconciling” to equal Quicken “cleared” and MD uses “cleared” to equal Quicken “reconciled”. I have green dots on numerous transactions in MD and I assumed that meant “cleared” (reconciled).

I am having the same issue. I have multiple accounts at Wells Fargo. I have quicken downloads enabled for the account. When I download any other account than my checking account, the transactions for that account and my checking account are both entered into my savings/credit card account. If I download a QIF file, verify that it only contains entries for the correct credit card account by opening in an editor and inspecting it directly, then import the QIF file, the same exact behavior occurs - i see all my checking account transactions plus my credit card transactions under the credit card account. There must be a bug in this version related to importing data when there are multiple accounts at one institution.

When you moved from Quicken you use the QIF format to migrate the transactions between programs. QIF is the best format for this but it does not have every little bit of detail, in one respect this is because QIF is an older format and does not know about certain details that have since been added.

The OFX/QFX specification includes a very specific field that is used when importing transactions, this is the Transaction ID. This is a unique value assigned by the banks server for each transaction is is this field and this field only that is used to determine if the transaction is a duplicate, no other field or combination of fields can give a 100% guarantee that the transaction is a duplicate or not.

Because QIF knows nothing about transaction IDs this data cannot be migrated from Quicken. Thus Moneydance has no idea that it is duplicate data at this stage. You need to use the Confirmation process in Moneydance to merge the information from the downloaded transactions with what is in the register in order for Moneydance to record the transactions IDs. Once Moneydance has the IDs, duplicate transactions will automatically be discarded.

The problem with transactions ending up in the same Moneydance account when using Direct connect is usually caused by incorrect mapping.

When setting up Direct Connect it is important to go slowly, during the process you will need to highlight what Bank account you want to associate with the account in Moneydance. This data is sent from your Bank's OFX server and can take time, this is used to populate a table that you select the right account from, behind the table is the information that Moneydance uses to set up the mapping. If you go too quickly and do not wait for this to occur what happens is that the first account details that the bank's server sends is the one used in the mapping , hence do this repeatedly and all Moneydance accounts are mapped to the one bank account.

With QIF downloads it comes back to QIF not having any mechanism to handle duplicates. Most banks give the user a mechanism to work around this to some degree by providing the ability to specify date ranges for the download and thus avoid downloading transactions that you have previously done. There is no way of automatically handling transactions you have manually entered however, the confirmation process is used here.

That appears to have worked in the one credit card transactions list I attempted to remedy though I found some entries that were imported as “new” yet were entered previously in Quicken but were not imported via QIF. Also, regarding the QIF import, some of the entries had incorrect categories listed for the transactions. Again, most likely due to the QIF import. I will balance the remedied transaction list against my next statement to see if the fixes were successful.